


remember, there are eagles

by the_ragnarok



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Animal Death, M/M, Sexual Assault, Violation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-24 23:56:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4938844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ragnarok/pseuds/the_ragnarok
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things Harold’s daemon isn’t, and one she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	remember, there are eagles

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by talk2thesky. <33333
> 
> Warnings from tags are elaborated on in end notes.

1.

The man who picks John up from the police station has a small crow perched on his shoulder, glittering black eyes gazing down at John and Phantom.

Phantom yawns, pointedly showing pink tongue and sharp teeth. Even thin and ragged as she's grown, she's still obviously powerful. If she weren't curled up under his seat, sleeping, those punks on the train would never have taken their chances with him.

"Please," Mr. Finch says. "We mean you no harm."

Pleasantly, John says, "Yeah, I'd trust that more if your bird weren't looking at us like we're about to become dinner."

Finch mutters something and turns away. The bird keeps watching.

Neither Finch nor the crow make an effort to introduce themselves to Phantom. "Stupid bird just treats me like I don't even exist," Phantom tells John before they go to sleep, irritable. It makes their working relationship with Finch choppy.

One day, Finch turns his head and the crow jumps on Phantom's back. Startled, Phantom bites the bird, shaking her like a rat. Finch turns, crying out in alarm, but he does it a fraction of a second too late.

The bird is still alive when Phantom lets go of her, but she-- _No,_ John abruptly realizes. _It_ is bleeding, animal red, not daemon gold.

Finch sighs, looking not at all like someone who was just attacked. He clicks at the crow, which flies to him. A remarkably well-trained animal. "Could you bring me the first aid kit, Mr. Reese?"

It's only once the bird is bandaged that John says, in a low voice, "You said you wouldn't lie to me." Phantom's growl is low, just on the edge of audible.

"I didn't lie." Finch is unfazed. "You assumed. Frankly, I expected better from someone of your background."

The next morning, the crow is nowhere to be seen. They don't talk about it.

Well, Finch and John don't. Phantom asks him before they turn in, "Do you think I killed it?"

"It wasn't a person," John says, and turns off the light.

2.

Crane's daemon is a beautiful gray and white fox. John almost yields to the temptation of scritching it between the ears (they're in the library, who would know?).

With icy politeness, the fox says, "Excuse me."

John flinches away like someone who nearly touched an open flame.

The fox's name is Phaedra. Phantom manages to make nice to her, and by the time they leave, Phaedra has thawed out sufficiently to share some interesting financial anecdotes with them.

"You're very knowledgeable," John says.

Phaedra gives Phantom a look that seems to communicate, _Sorry your human's an idiot_. "As Mr. Crane's daemon, I'd have to be."

Phantom nips his hand, not gently, and John contains himself to smiling and nodding for the rest of the night.

They meet Phaedra's human a week later, a tall, dignified older gentleman with a gleaming silver beard. He eyes John like he's trash, gives Phantom a fond look, and walks away.

"You know a lot of witches?" John asks Finch once the man is gone.

Harold shrugs. "Some. It's good to make their acquaintance when possible."

Even better to have them owe you favors. There's probably an interesting story there. John still has hope he'll figure it out some day.

"Phaedra was right about you," Phantom says, head resting on her paws.

John tweaks her tail. "Shouldn't you be taking my side?"

She cocks an ear. "John. Have you _met_ yourself?"

3.

"Haven't you forgotten something?" John asks.

Harold looks up from where he's adjusting Mr. Partridge's tie. "I can't imagine what you're referring to."

Truth is, it doesn't seem like Harold to forget. He's a detail guy. He'd never go out undercover with the wrong kind of tie, nevermind the wrong daemon, but as far as John can see Partridge doesn't have a daemon at all.

After a minute of John silently staring at him, Harold yields, fetching a little box out of his jacket, tied to a golden chain like a pocket watch.

John doesn't recoil when Harold opens the box, revealing the tarantula inside. It's - she's? - looking up at John, mandibles clicking.

"It's mechanical," Harold says finally, closing the box. "Spiders can hardly be trained, after all, and I can't chance my supposed daemon jumping on someone. Although I suppose it could provide a distraction in a worst case scenario." As an afterthought, he adds, "The bulge it makes under the jacket is subtle, but not invisible. I'm surprised you didn't notice."

John did. He thought it was surveillance equipment. "Haven't run into a lot of people with bug daemons."

"Arthropods," Harold corrects. "And is that so? I run into them an awful lot in this identity. Snakes as well." The wry curve of his mouth requires no response.

4.

Grace's daemon is a tiny clownfish, swimming in a water-filled locket on her chest. "I've given up figuring out what it means about me," she says, with a shrug. "But we're happy together, me and Dag."

In the photograph behind her, if Harold has a daemon, John can't see it.

Grace tracks his gaze. Her sigh is sad and fond. "He was a traditional man," she says, which John translates to mean _Wouldn't touch daemons with me._ "I was okay with that. I mean," she gestures to her little clownfish. "How couldn't I be? Maybe that's what Dag is supposed to imply." She strokes the aquarium locket. "That only people who are odd in a very certain way will suit me."

"How else was he odd?" John says, keeping his expression carefully sympathetic.

"Have you heard of anyone whose daemon wouldn't settle?" Grace says. "Well into adulthood, I mean. Sometimes she'd be a crow for weeks on end, and then the next day she'd be a goose, and a snow leopard the day after. I thought maybe that was why." Her voice cracks, but she recovers with admirable speed. "That he didn't want her to stop changing; or maybe that he was afraid she'll keep changing anyway."

When he's well away, John says, conversationally, "You're kind of a bastard."

"I'm well aware," Harold says, glumly.

"What were you going to do once you'd gotten married?"

There's long tense silence, then abruptly Harold says, "Behind you," and the shooting starts.

5.

John'd never paid too much attention to the aquarium Harold keeps in the back of the library. It was always there, background. Now he keeps his eyes strictly to the front, trying not to even think about it.

That may not help. Root is being thorough.

Harold is doing his best. His previous feint almost worked, darting his eyes at a gecko watching them from the ceiling, so fast that even John nearly missed it.

Root hadn't, and neither had her daemon. The dingo was running before John could register, throwing himself into the wall hard enough to knock the gecko to the floor.

Then, he picked it up between his teeth and _bit_. Harold's scream was very satisfying, but the fact that the lizard was very dead and Harold wasn't kind of killed it.

Root had already stripped Harold down to skin and tossed his clothes in a fire. "Could I be missing something?" she says, giving the flames a considering look.

"Maybe it's a tardigrade," her daemon says. John doesn't know his name, and doesn't particularly want to.

"Don't be a dick," Root tells him lightly. She turns to John. "Maybe your daemon's taken human form. I've heard weirder things happening." Then she's kissing John, sudden and violent like a storm, stopping just as soon as she started. She wipes her mouth. "Okay, probably not."

She gives Phantom a considering look then, but her dingo says, "Don't bother," disdainfully. "She's his. Just look at their stupid faces."

"Hey," John says, mildly, for form's sake. The slash of a knife across his face isn't a surprise.

The teeth sinking into his leg are, as well as the shock of touching souls, leaving him sick and curled up on himself. Phantom keens.

"Just take me and be done with it," Harold snaps. "What are you even trying to accomplish with this trickery?"

"That," Root says sweetly, "would be telling." And then she turns back, takes a few steps and pushes the aquarium down.

Glass shatters. Water splashes. Harold makes a truly awful gurgling noise. Little tropical fish flap on the floor, mouths gaping. Root ignores all of them to scoop up a little sea anemone in the palm of her hand.

She opens her mouth to say--

John doesn't know what, because then Phantom leaps and sinks her teeth into the dingo's throat, giving him a good shake. The dingo snarls and struggles, but he's no match for Phantom.

It's not enough. Root smiles through the pain and sinks her hand into the thick fur at the scruff of Phantom's nape, pulling her away as shock makes her go limp. John breathes shallowly. He's not puking, but that's about all he's got going for him.

Root squishes the sea anemone in her other hand and lets the remains drop. She doesn't acknowledge her stung palm at all. "I thought so," she tells Harold, all glad reverence. "I knew it."

Harold closes his eyes and says nothing.

"You won't mind soon enough," Root says, a threat, a promise. "Who else could touch your daemon? Who else could even reach her?" Her smile is beatific. "I'll be so honored, Harry."

Then the cavalry rolls in, and they're nominally safe, even though Root gets away.

~~

"It's impossible," Phantom tells John later when they're alone. "That means his daemon settled when he was _forty_ , that doesn't happen."

It doesn't, but the possibility still nags at John. "It might still not be settled," he says. "It could be choosing to keep in the same shape anyway."

Huskies can't quite roll their eyes, but Phantom gives it a good try. "What do you think settling _means_ , John?"

John concedes this with a tilt of his head. "What if the Machine existed before Harold put her on the internet?" He can see it, a young version of Harold toting around a computer the way Grace did with her clownfish, or Partridge did with his spider.

It's just too uncannily right: a daemon settled into an amorphous, all-knowing shape, something that could only exist in networks, plugging away at data, keeping lists.

"Even if the Machine's intelligent, it's not _alive_ ," Phantom says, exasperated. "Don't give me that look. It doesn't eat or shit or breathe. Harold's a great man, but he's a _man_ , not a robot." Then she looks at John and says, "I just made it worse, didn't I."

John closes his eyes and breathes shallowly. He tries not to remember what Root felt like, touching Phantom, touching _him_. It's awful in a different way than the memory of Jessica, both of them unlike Kara, but at least John was prepared. At least he also had some good, clean memories, the rapid heartbeat of Jessica's hummingbird, so fragile and lovely. The wicked strength of Kara's lynx.

If Root succeeded, Harold would only know rabid teeth closing around his throat, a mockery of a kiss. A robot, or a psychopath, might be able to stand that. Could Harold?

"Root was right, though." Phantom's tail is tucked between her legs. "How would we get to the Machine?"

"We'll ask," John says, even though his mouth has gone abruptly dry.

~~

For long moments, all John can think is, _Please don't let him laugh._

Harold doesn't. He blinks at John once, twice. "Thank you," he says finally, voice low, not quite looking at John's face, "but no."

John's heart beats hard in his chest. He takes a breath. "Fine," he says, turning to go, but Phantom bursts forward and blurts out, "We won't be as bad as her. I know we're killers, but we're not like her, I swear."

"Oh," Harold says, evidently at a loss for words. "Of course not, my dears, not at all," and he goes clumsily to his knees, sinking his hands into the fur in Phantom's side.

Phantom softly whines, a sound John would emulate if he didn't feel like someone knocked the breath out of him. He settles for a choked, "Harold," feeling those strong hands running over his soul, knowing him, loving him.

Phantom licks Harold's face with ecstatic enthusiasm, and John's already wincing at how bad this will turn out, but he can't stop her, can't stop himself from reaching for Harold.

Harold draws him into a kiss, and John is so pathetically grateful that he doesn't have to think, he would do absolutely anything in the world for Harold, anything.

"So you'll let us?" Phantom says.

Harold draws back. John's obscurely proud to see him taking a moment to catch his breath. "I appreciate the sentiment - truly I do, you have no idea how much." He's scritching Phantom behind the ears, and both her and John melt, moving as close as they can get to Harold. "But there's no need."

When finally John can open his eyes, he sees a sparrow resting on Harold's shoulder. "Hello," she says, shy. "I'm Sally."

John opens his palm. She alights there for just the barest moment, just long enough to register the shock it sends through John, the matching recognition on Harold's face. Then she's gone again, fluttering out of an open window, out of sight.

"She keeps to herself," Harold says. "Always did, I'm afraid. Please don't think she's not fond of you - she utterly adores you," he tells Phantom. "She's simply...."

"A very private person," Phantom and John say in unison. "We get it," John adds.

Harold opens his mouth, closes it. Then, with a touch of wonder, he says, "You do, don't you?"

John nods. Phantom's smiling, tongue lolling, and butting Harold's thigh for more petting. John wonders if he'll get used to it, this feeling of being wanted whole, down to his sins and history. He hopes he gets the chance.

When they leave the library, the familiar sense of being watched hovers around John like a benediction. He looks up to see a sparrow perching on a security camera, invisible among millions just like it.

**Author's Note:**

> Sexual assault and violation are for Root forcibly touching daemons with John and kissing him.
> 
> Animals harmed in this story include a crow (who survives), a lizard and a sea anemone (which don't), as well as two daemons fighting.


End file.
